MEDIA LITERACY VERSUS TRADITIONAL LITERACY - A NEW VIEW AT READING

The paper explores the quality and reception of literary works in the form of multimedia and interactive text relying on current media theory and relevant literary theories, especially post-structuralism and hypertext theory. The structure of hypertext and other digital media influences writing as well as reception of a literary work. However, whether the age of the printed word and reading is really at its end or the Internet as a medium represents just one of the phenomena which will additionally enrich, and not destroy the classical literary production, then the question for which there are as of yet no scientific arguments remains without an answer. The analysis of various attempts to write literature in electronic form, whether web-based or not, as well as reception of interactive texts, confirmed the hypothesis that their existence largely depends on the reader/user. The traditional literacy skill-set contains the traditional literacy of reading, writing, speaking and listening. This skill-set is insufficient for reading in the digital age. Media literacy, as well as digital literacy are acquired as well, to make it possible to understand the new literary works. Completeness, self-containment, and coherence as characteristics of traditional literary works (based on traditional literacy) cannot literally be translated into literature that appears in electronic form (based on media and digital literacy). Aesthetics and electronic literature theory are just being created, that is to say they are in the process of emerging. Interactive multimedia approach to every user opens the possibility of different learning styles. Literary works that appear processed for multimedia can have a manifold educational role. Furthermore, the connection of learning and play (edutainment) is considered as a way of acquiring knowledge. This approach is entering the field of literary education and new instruments and evaluation methods about the quality and reception of literary work in multimedia form are being established. The paper includes an empirical research of quality of five examples of multimedia software. The quality of the electronic literary works was evaluated by adult subjects (students of the Faculty of Teacher Education in Zagreb, last semester), with the purpose to find out the difference between reading (traditional stories/novels) and reading/re-reading/using the interactive literature, and their use in schools.